Bitches and Sad Ladies: An Anthology of Fiction by and About Women by Pat Rotter (review)

Abstract

(New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1976. 445 pages, $225.) When I suggested to a friend that she consider Bitches and Sad Ladies for a course in contemporary women writers, she sighed, "I'd never get it past my curriculum committee with a tide like that." While I deplore such lexical prudery (and the committee would presumably be even more indignant at the language in many of the stories, especially coming from female writers), the phrase is not felicitous, particularly because the stories concern women who are too fully human to be simplistically labeled. Pat Rotter begins her brief preface by defining a bitch as "a woman who takes care of herself and seeks her identity from within," while a sad lady "needs to be taken care of" and destroys herself by wanting "to bury herself in a man." Most of the main characters are a blend of both, and more.